Seneca knew from experience. In one of the most dreadful periods of his life, he lost his livelihood, his home and then his young child. He was exiled on false charges . He buried an infant. Fortune…she can be cruel. As Seneca wrote to Marcia, the daughter of a prominent Roman historian, in his beautiful and moving “ Consolations ” essays: “Snatch the pleasures your children bring, let your children in turn find delight in you, and drain joy to the dregs without delay; no promise has been given ...
Feb 22, 2024•2 min•Ep. 1283
We talked about Lincoln recently, who used to bring his “brats” to the office , in the words of William Herndon, Lincoln’s law partner. As much as he hated the noise, Herndon actually seemed to admire Lincoln’s ability to deal with this. “The boys were absolutely unrestrained in their amusement,” he noted. “If they pulled down all the books from the shelves, bent the points of all the pens, overturned inkstands, scattered law papers over the floor or threw the pencils into the spittoon, it never...
Feb 21, 2024•3 min•Ep. 1282
Nobody likes it when their kids are sad. It breaks our hearts when they feel lonely , ashamed, or frustrated. We’d like to just make this all go away, to protect them from all this, so they can feel happy all the time. But that’s not possible (nor is it, as we’ve talked about, actually a recipe for happiness ). In Good Inside , the great Dr. Becky writes, “I don’t know one adult who has ever said, ‘Wow, my parents really got all those uncomfortable feelings out of me! The disappointment and frus...
Feb 20, 2024•4 min•Ep. 1281
It’s hard to be a kid , as we’ve said many times. It’s hard to make transitions between worlds . It’s hard to come home after a long day of behaving and not misbehave. They want personal space. They want some freedom. What they need is some empathy and understanding . You want and need these things and you’re an adult who has a lot more practice, has a lot more resources and a lot more maturity. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook ...
Feb 19, 2024•2 min•Ep. 1280
Ryan speaks with his longtime friend fellow father Austin Kleon during a stop along his book tour for The Daily Dad: 366 Meditations on Parenting, Love, and Raising Great Kids . They discuss the life habits that they maintain in order to help fuel their creative success, why the most effective form of parenting is indirect, what parenting skills they are working on right now, how adopting a daily journaling habit vastly improved their lives, and more. Austin Kleon is a writer, author, artist, sp...
Feb 17, 2024•11 min•Ep. 1279
When we think teacher, we think classroom. When we think leader, we think the corner office or the lectern or a general in front of their troops. But the truth is that a teacher can do their job anywhere and in many forms, just as a leader can. Plutarch would say of Socrates that he “did not set up desks for his students, sit in a teacher’s chair, or reserve a prearranged time for lecturing and walking with his pupils. No, he practiced philosophy while joking around (when the chance arose) and d...
Feb 16, 2024•3 min•Ep. 1278
Bruce Springsteen’s childhood was a strange one. His mother worked to support their family. His father was distant and harsh . He spent a lot of time with his grandparents, who spoiled him, in part because they were grieving the loss of their own daughter years earlier. “His Majesty, the Baby,” is how his childhood is described in the fascinating book Deliver Me From Nowhere (incredible book, by the way). Springsteen would admit that this kind of attention and celebration “seems to a kid like a ...
Feb 15, 2024•3 min•Ep. 1277
Marcus even wrote a testament to his love for his wife and their life together in a letter to his tutor Fronto. “I call the gods to witness,” he wrote, “that I would I were now living in exile with [Faustina] rather than without her on the Palatine.” Sure, the palaces were nice and so was power. He had an important job. But none of it was better than spending time with his lovely partner . It’s a wonderful sentiment, but is it true ? Marcus Aurelius spent years away from Rome, fighting wars, vis...
Feb 14, 2024•4 min•Ep. 1276
It’s not easy for lots of reasons. Gay Talese, who knew the Didion family ( who we’ve been talking about a lot recently ), speculates in Evelyn McDonnell’s biography of Joan Didion ( signed copies here ) what it must have been like to be Quintana Roo, their adopted daughter. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
Feb 13, 2024•3 min•Ep. 1275
These are the Cardinal Virtues , which Zeno laid down in the 3rd Century B.C. as: Courage Discipline Justice Wisdom We need these virtues and we need to teach these virtues to our children. Their life…and the future hinges on it. So memorize these four virtues. Act on them. Live them. Parent by them. And keep them close to your heart always. If you want to carry the Four Virtues around like a compass,, over at Daily Stoic, we created the Four Virtues Medallion . INSERT 4V MEDALLION PIC The front...
Feb 12, 2024•4 min•Ep. 1274
While on tour for his new book The Daily Dad: 366 Meditations on Parenting, Love, and Raising Great Kids , Ryan met up with his longtime friend and occasional running partner Casey Neistat for a live interview at Barnes & Noble in Union Square during which they shared the story of how they met, reflections and wisdom they have gleaned from their journeys through parenthood, the work and life habits that have led to their success, their advice for new parents, and more. Casey Neistat is a YouTube...
Feb 10, 2024•9 min•Ep. 1273
“This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/dailydad and get on your way to being your best self.” When our kids mess up we say: Aren’t you a little old for that? And we have all sorts of rules of thumb for what things are age appropriate or not—what age they should stop having accidents, what age they should stop throwing a tantrum just because they’re tired , what age it stops being okay for other people to have to pick up after them. “We ought not wil...
Feb 09, 2024•3 min•Ep. 1272
There’s an interesting passage in Evelyn McDonnell’s fascinating biography of Joan Didion ( who we have written about many times and we also just had Evelyn on the Daily Stoic podcast), that points out another about the difference between how the public saw Didion and her husband John Gregory Dunne, also a great and successful writer. One was clearly identified as a parent and the other was not, even though Dunne actually wrote a whole book about the topic! As we’ve said before , by talking abou...
Feb 08, 2024•5 min•Ep. 1271
We all feel a little self-conscious about it. Our kids don’t behave as well as we’d like. They make a mess. They make an incredible amount of noise. Perhaps this is why we keep them at home, why we’re always apologizing, preparing people in advance for the hurricane that may or may not come through. Maybe some of us fear being overshadowed by our kids or judged for having them with us— that it will undermine our image as professionals. Don’t apologize . Do your best to clean up, to teach them ho...
Feb 07, 2024•4 min•Ep. 1270
“This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/dailydad and get on your way to being your best self.” The great John Wooden would practice his team hard through the week. He’d run through the plans over and over and over again. Yet as they left the locker room and headed out onto the court for the game, he would say to the team, “Well, I’ve done my job.” He wasn’t going to be micromanaging them from the sideline. It was their turn to do their job. And so it...
Feb 06, 2024•5 min•Ep. 1269
The tantrum. The whining about going to school. The punch that’s thrown. The slipping grades. The sneaking out. The lie. The shouting. The moping around the house. These are not things you like to see your kids do. Maybe these are things you’ve talked to them about before, maybe a million times. But maybe that’s the problem. You’re seeing the wrong thing. You’re talking about the wrong thing. In her wonderful book Good Inside (yes, we love it), Dr. Becky Kennedy writes that “on the surface we se...
Feb 05, 2024•4 min•Ep. 1268
On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad, Ryan talks to creator, author, designer, and the founder of ConvertKit Nathan Barry on having kids earlier in their career, their interest in farms and outdoors, and the process of Emotional Vaccination. IG, and, X, ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
Feb 03, 2024•14 min•Ep. 1267
These are challenging, uncertain times, no question. What’s at the root of it? How did we get here? And what can fathers do about it? The answer comes to us, as it often does, from an ancient prescription: Character is fate . Who a person is determines what will happen and what they can do. It should surprise no one that a culture that has put character at the absolute bottom of the list of requirements for its leaders—below whether they tell us what we want to hear, below how clever their tweet...
Feb 02, 2024•3 min•Ep. 1266
Rich is how much you get to see your kids , we said recently. We were redefining wealth away from material items and salary—although these things are nice as far as they go—and towards a thing that pretty much everyone wishes they had more of: time with the people you love most. Is it really a rich life if you are missing out on something so priceless? Perhaps it’s worth also taking a minute to do some similar considerations about power. There are the obvious trappings of power: The corner offic...
Feb 01, 2024•2 min•Ep. 1265
Maybe you did before, but you can’t now. Before you could afford to get sucked into drama, to gossip, to get into long arguments with your buddies, to be petty, to hold grudges, to follow the latest breaking news or celebrity. But now? Now, you need to remind yourself: I ain’t got time for that . Because you don’t. You have kids now. You have people you’re responsible for. You have a big enough struggle on your hands. Your crazy coworker is their own problem. That actor who cheated on their spou...
Jan 31, 2024•2 min•Ep. 1264
We’ve said before that it’s never too late . It’s never too late, as a parent, to follow your dreams—to show your kids that they can too. It’s never too late to start showing up. It’s never too late to deal with your demons. It’s never too late to change. Sooner is better of course, but it’s never too late. It’s also never too late to do that thing we’ve been talking about a lot recently— repair . “Repair can happen ten minutes after a blowup, ten days later, or ten years later,” Dr. Becky Kenne...
Jan 30, 2024•3 min•Ep. 1263
It’s a wonderful state—being in flow. Getting caught up in your work. Getting caught up in the moment. And before you had kids, you lived for this…in fact, you may well have lived in it. Life was simpler then. You would get lost for days at a time in a project. You could spend years, it would seem in retrospect, in the building stages of a company, in the pursuit of a dream , in finding yourself, in exploring the world. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitte...
Jan 29, 2024•3 min•Ep. 1262
On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad, Ryan talks with his wife Samantha on how Sam prepares for writing Ryan, Integrating his routine in a well adjusted life, how this year is going to be different, all while protecting their headspace. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
Jan 27, 2024•15 min•Ep. 1261
There is a great story about a young Spartan woman, Gorgo, who would one day become queen. Despite her royal status, like all Spartans she was raised to be self-sufficient, and without any frills or needless luxury. So imagine Gorgo’s surprise when she witnessed a distinguished visitor to Sparta have his shoes put on by a servant. “Look, father,” she said, “the stranger has no hands!” ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
Jan 26, 2024•2 min•Ep. 1260
We have emotions. We experience stressful situations. We have intrusive thoughts. So really what we have to teach our kids, Dr. Becky writes in her incredible book Good Inside (must read!), is how to differentiate urge from action. “Having the urge to bite is okay,” she explains, “biting a person is not. Having the urge to hit is okay; hitting a person is not okay.” We know this to be true in our adult lives—that there’s a big difference between being angry and then doing something rash or irres...
Jan 25, 2024•3 min•Ep. 1259
Our parents weren’t everything we needed. Maybe it was more time we needed. More understanding. More kindness. More support. More love. More just them having their act together. But they weren’t this. Sadly, they also weren’t what the world needed either. Few generations have been. They kicked problems down the road. They started wars that cost blood and treasure to little purpose. They abused the environment. They averted their gaze, turned their hearts away from sufferings and injustice. In a ...
Jan 24, 2024•4 min•Ep. 1258
George Dewey was a kid who got in trouble a lot. His father was always bailing him out. Finally, as a last ditch effort, he secured his son entrance into the U.S Naval Academy in 19XX. “George, I’ve done all I can for you,” his father told him as he dropped him off. “The rest you must do for yourself.” We talked a while back about how you have to let your kids fail , you have to let them struggle. As we’ve said before Luctor Et Emergo—from the struggle they emerge ( we have a cool challenge coin...
Jan 23, 2024•2 min•Ep. 1257
The bike was nice. So was the trip to Disneyland. So was being able to graduate from college without student debt. They appreciated the presents. They appreciated the clothes that fit. Or maybe they didn’t. Maybe they took for granted what it cost for you to buy a house where they could have their own room. Maybe they didn’t understand what it took out of you to give them a better life than you had, to pay for all this stuff, to pay to go to all these places. Maybe they didn’t understand because...
Jan 22, 2024•4 min•Ep. 1256
On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad Podcast, Ryan talks with clinical psychologist Dr. Becky Kennedy on how we emotionally vaccinate, the ability to cope through stress, educating our kids on emotions and her new book Good Inside Dr. Becky Kennedy is an American clinical psychologist who is founder and chief executive officer of the Good Inside company, an online parenting advice service. She has been called the "millennial parent whisperer" by Time Magazine and is a number one New York Tim...
Jan 20, 2024•17 min•Ep. 1255
The career opportunities are hard to turn down. It’s hard in the moment, as we’ve talked about , to be able to think too far into the future. It’s hard to make much in the way of long term investments as a parent because you’re so overwhelmed by the responsibilities of the present. But we have to remember what we’re after, we have to keep in perspective that this is a marathon we’ve signed up for. We quoted the baseball player Anthony Rendon recently about how he was having to weigh painful but ...
Jan 19, 2024•3 min•Ep. 1254
